Day 11 and back on the keyboard, hopefully it’ll survive, it’s a lot better than not having it but there is about a 6 second delay between hitting a key and it appearing on the screen which is boring with mistakes. I showed Alastair e mails from Ruth and Katharine this morning and he replied to Ruth from my ipad which behaved fine and didn’t do it’s disappearing paper trick, or at least not for the first edit, however when he went back to add or edit it, it started doing it to him too so it can’t be all JPS (jock proximitiy syndrome).
Yesterday as you may have all seen from the forecast was pretty windy. We had 15-18 knots in the morning building to gusts of 37 knots overnight, over the course of the day we reduced sail bit by bit to 3 reefs in the main and we fully furled the genoa and set the staysail, a smaller headsail which sets between the genoa and the mast on it’s own removable forestay.
We’re still bowling along at about 7 knots with minimum sails up, the wind has gone around to the NE from North so it’s considerably more comfortable now than it was before but we’re still moving around quite a lot.
The sky was clear all of yesterday and we made good amps into the batteries from the solar panels but as the autopilot is having to work really hard we are still having to run the engine once or twice a day for battery maintenance. We also had beautiful stars and a moon for most of last night.
The car for the staysail track, through which the sheet for controlling it passes, has a fault that I can’t find. It has a pin which is spring loaded to hold it down and to adjust it’s position on the track one lifts this, slides the car and re engages the pin. For some reason it seems to disengage itself and slide right to the back of the track which gives a horrible sail shape. Everything seems to work fine but it still does it so I’ve now put aline through it, tied to the windlass, to hold it in the right position.
Yesterday afternoon and evening we were getting lots of water in the cockpit with breaking waves but now that they are more astern it’s far better although we still get the odd splash, poor Stephen has just fielded a splash into his lap.
Again, although we’ve had 25 hours for the day I suspect it’ll not be a record day or, if it is, then only by a small amount. however we are consistently making good miles towards, and straight towards now, the goal of St Maarten. It’s possible we’ve passed the halfway point in time if not in distance.
None of us were feeling great yesterday but no one was ill either, just uncomfortable from the horrible jerky motion of the boat. We had left over curry with some spiced fried potatoes and leeks last night and I think I’ll have to do something with the peppers and mushrooms and freeze whatever I do to stop them dying a pointless death.
Bad news, I have to report that my torch, a minimaglight, has gone missing in action. I found it gone after we’d set the staysail. I’ve looked around the scuppers for it but it’s definitely not there (after I lost my mast in 2021 I thought I’d lost it too but it turned up a couple of days later in the scupper) my hope is that it fell out of it’s holster whilst I was upside down in the lazarette, fishing out the sheets for the staysail, next time it’s a quiet day I’ll empty the lazarette and see if it turns up.
Day’s run is a record mind you it’s 25 hours because we put the clock back.
Slainte
Jock and the team.
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